Research Subject Area(s)

Download original

Summary of the impact

`The Sublime Object' was a major AHRC-funded project of the Tate Britain,
which used a range of
open access media, free public exhibitions and events to promote new
understanding of the ways
in which perceptions of the Sublime in the external landscape are shaped
by cultural experiences,
and which was substantially shaped by Professor Philip Shaw's work.

Shaw worked with Tate Education/Learning to develop initiatives that
would engage Tate's gallery
and online audiences closely in an exploration of the concept of the
Sublime, a theoretical concept
encompassing ideas of the great, the awe-inspiring, and the overpowering.
Through the
collaboration of the public, artists, and academics, this work articulates
ways in which the Sublime
is experienced today. Shaw's research conceptually underpinned the
project, helping to shape the
ideas of artists, Tate visitors (in person and online), and curators. His
thinking for pieces
commissioned by the project was, in turn, shaped by this dialogue,
demonstrating the enrichment
of research via its initial impact.

Underpinning research

The major underpinning research for the project was Philip Shaw's The
Sublime: The New Critical
Idiom (2), which offers both a survey and a critique of the
development of the Sublime from its
origins in the classical period to its emergence in the present day as a
key theoretical concept.
Research for the book began not long after Shaw, who has been at the
University of Leicester
since 1991, published Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination (1).
Having discovered the centrality
of the Sublime to contemporary debates over the significance of the
battle, Shaw decided to
undertake a more systematic investigation of the concept.

This research set up many of the questions posed for a broader audience
by the Tate project,
considering the significance of the Sublime as concept and cultural
practice in western
understanding, and its distinctive treatment in different disciplines and
media. In July 2008,
following the very positive reception of The Sublime, Shaw was
invited to join the investigative
team of `The Sublime Object'. Members of the research team, including the
initial Principal
Investigator Richard Humphreys (Tate curator), his successor Christine
Riding (Tate curator), and
the project's post-doctoral researcher Lydia Hamlett, approached Shaw
because they had used his
study in the course of their own research.

The project's PI Christine Riding states: `Professor Shaw's approach to
the sublime was crucial in
representing a clear and concise `way in' for all of us working on the
research project, offering
relationships between the past and the present, between different
disciplines, and furthermore
important avenues of inquiry. For example, Professor Shaw's discussion of
the Longinian sublime —
the power of the written and spoken word — gave me the idea to approach
the artist Douglas
Gordon to create a text-based installation at Tate Britain, which was one
of the major public-facing
outcomes of the whole project.'

The project's post-doctoral fellow, Dr Lydia Hamlett comments further:
`The project originally had
strong biases on the eighteenth century and contemporary periods but, with
the arrival of Professor
Phil Shaw as co-investigator and [my] early modern expertise, the project
expanded in terms of its
chronological scope. The examination of the notion of the sublime across
periods including its
classical origins and Longinus's Peri Hypsous — although now with
a particular focus on its relation
to art objects — was inspired by the chronological reach of Phil's book, The
Sublime. The long
essays and shorter, object-based, texts, on the project website are
arranged according to these
various time periods'.

During the life of the project Shaw completed seven essays on the Sublime
for the `Art of the
Sublime' open-access website, including a major survey essay `Modernism
and the Sublime' (4,
below) and six shorter studies of individual works of art (5). In this
work he incorporates new
thinking generated by the public dialogue arising from the project. He
published an additional
essay investigating Byron's treatment of the Sublime (6) and an extract
from Shaw's The Sublime
(2) appeared in a book edited by the British artist and art historian
Simon Morley entitled The
Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art (Whitechapel Art Gallery,
2010), pp. 52-6.

AHRC Major Research Project, `The Sublime Object', PI Christine Riding,
CI Philip Shaw (2007-2010).
Value of grant was £570, 283.75 (FEC), with £38,679.20 awarded to the
University of
Leicester.

Details of the impact

The project has fostered understanding of complex concepts amongst a wide
international public,
helped artists and curators use these ideas in their own practice, and
extended the Tate's display
collection through the restoration of two previously unexhibited
paintings.

Shaping Displays and Impact on Tate Visitors

A collection of thirty-eight historic works from the Tate Collection was
displayed in a free exhibition
`Art and the Sublime: Terror, Torment and Transcendence', from April 2009
to November 2010.
The selection illustrated the changing historical meanings and possible
interpretations of the
concept of the Sublime. The display included a brochure published by Tate
Publishing (March
2010) and multi-media interpretation in the gallery itself, with wall
texts and audio commentary. An
accompanying catalogue, drawing substantially on Shaw's work, has sold
over 1,500 copies.

This exhibition was accompanied by a newly commissioned text piece by
Douglas Gordon, `Pretty
much every word written, spoken, heard, overheard from 1989...' in Gallery
9 and the adjoining
Octagon space, 16 February - 23 May 2010. Tate Britain receives in excess
of 1.5 million visitors
(source: Tate Annual Report) per year. Feedback on the exhibition (on
independent blogs) shows
that it had encouraged visitors to think anew about their experiences of
the Sublime, to compare
these with the historical examples documented, considering why particular
scenes and places
evoke intense responses, and to re-discover the art of the Sublime: `this
synoptic hang whose sole
common denominator is the sublime as announced by the organizers provides
the chance to
retrieve certain forgotten paintings "previously considered devoid of
interest"'.

Two unexpected outcomes of the project were: the `rediscovery' and
subsequent restoration of the
painting `The Raising of Lazarus' (1822) by B. R. Haydon, which initiated
proposals for a display
and a short documentary film (included on the project website); and a
conservation project
involving the painting `Beyond Man's Footsteps' (1894) by Briton Riviere.
Diana Donald, an
acknowledged expert on nineteenth-century art and culture, wrote an
in-focus text to accompany
the work on the Sublime website, and the painting itself was the subject
of an in-focus display,
curated by Christine Riding, which opened at Tate Britain in May 2011.

New Appreciations of the Sublime, Online

The official project website went live in January 2013. It includes seven
films commissioned and
produced by the project team in collaboration with Tate Media and Tate
curators: one on the `Art
and the Sublime' display and Douglas Gordon commission, three on
site-specific contemporary art
commissions (Douglas Gordon at Tate Britain, Bill Viola at St Paul's
Cathedral and Mark Wallinger
at the White Horse) and three art and location films (on John
Constable/Salisbury, J M W
Turner/The Highlands, James Ward/Gordale Scar), on which Shaw advised. See
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/films-r1141202.

Qualitative responses from members of the public to the project's
activities are documented in
these short films. Reactions include an enhanced awareness of the gallery
as a space, an
awareness of nature as something that can overcome human agency, and the
ways in which the
curated paintings combined with the Gordon's installation created a new
sense of paintings'
soundscapes. Since January 2013 the website has generated 26,000 page
views.

Engaging New Audiences

- The research team staged four Sublime events at `Late at Tate' (the
Gallery's free public
programme, designed to attract new audiences): 'Sublime Environments' in
collaboration with
Cape Farewell (6 February 2009), `Beyond Scale' (2 October 2009), `The
Real Thing' (3
September 2010) and `Sublimity' (3rd December 2010). These events
attracted over 5,000 visitors.

- Tate Conferences and Seminars: `The Baroque Sublime' (9 May 2008), `The
Sublime in Crisis:
New Perspectives on the Sublime in British Visual Culture, 1760-1900' (14-15
September 2009),
`Modernism and the Sublime: "Wrong from the Start"' (30 November 2009) and
`The Contemporary
Sublime' (20 February 2010). The average attendance for each of these
events, attended by
curators, artists, post-graduate students, and young museum professionals as
well as academics,
was 140.

Impact on Practitioners

Representative evidence:
Recognising the significance of Shaw's work in mediating the concept of
the Sublime to non-academic
audiences the British artist Simon Morley included an extract from Shaw's
book in his
critical anthology The Sublime (see section 2). The painter and
photographer John Timberlake
summarises the impact of the project on his creative practice thus:

Professor Phil Shaw's work on the sublime has been of pivotal
significance in the further
development of my own fine art practice and research in the past few
years. His book The
Sublime published by Routledge was very helpful in my thinking through of
the visual tropes
and representations of the sublime, and thinking through the implications
for landscape art.
The conference `Wrong from the Start' which he organised at Tate Britain
late in 2009, was
immensely helpful in allowing me to begin thinking through those subsumed
elements and
traces of the romantic sublime- whether acknowledged at the time or not —
that infused
Modernist aesthetics.

The artist Daniel Iles comments: `[the Sublime Object] provided me with
ways into thinking about
my own practice that avoid any sense that mere visual attractiveness is a
relevant critical approach
to it'. These testimonials demonstrate the project's impact on
practitioners, and the potential of its
temporal reach for future generations of art-lovers and artists alike.